The Best Time to be in 2 Rail O Scale

My 2 rail consists of all MTH premiere 4 axle units..very scale,quiet wheel noise wise and very trouble free. My Atlas 2 rail switches are simple and much less problematic compared to there 3 rail brothers.

I was forced to go 3 rail with my fleet of six axle engines due to min curve issues.Track noise is higher,current draw is higher for equal MU pulls...but they perform quite well plus with command couplers i can change out MU's from my command couch.

I certainly agree!  I too was at Hershey way back when, and did make one Cherry Valley club meet, back when Frank Thomson and Jan Lorenzen were active.

I have more than everything I could possibly hope for in O Scale, except maybe a Bi-Polar and a Skytop, and even those are now readily available.

I am now patiently waiting for battery/RC to be perfected and economical.

Hey John, Pierre here. 

Remember back in the day the shows at Elmwood park NJ? That was my first exposure to O scale. Wow, just WOW. Then there was Jan Lorenz locomotive workshop open house and various tables available for O scale train goodies, then the occaisional Stamford club meet and layout show, then I met you in the hallway of the O scale convention in Stamford Connecticut with your outstanding Linfield Northern and Southern switching layout. That did it. I was hooked. Sold all the postwar at Yonkers raceway    train show in about 40 mins much to the surprise of my fascinated wife. Then moved on to scale.   Then came the Marlboro High school scale weekend shows in Massachusetts, another eye opener! Ah yes the Weaver RS 3 red box miracle. Until then all I ran were All nation switcher and 40 foot boxcars.  Progressions to the O scale conventions led to having tables and selling then what I wish I still had, but no problems making others happy. I have built quite a few O scale switching layouts and some 3 rail postwar traditional layouts. Back and forth scale to toy to scale and back to toy. With multiple things in mind, fun, sharing, building, operation, research, scratchbuilding, but the real excitement is meeting so many wonderful people in the last 30 years. You have always been an inspiration, and have motivated many. Big thanks go out to You,  Attalee Taylor, George Eshbach, Bob Weaver, Rich Yoder, and modellers like  Neville Rossiter, and so many others. The magazines in the last 3+ decades were always very special to us.Dan Henon, 48/ft O scale news, Myron Biggar O scale Railroading,   Then came O scale trains magazine as per Joe Giannovario and Brian Scace with Jaini Giannovario rescuing the magazine after Joe's untimely death.  Currently picked up and expanded by Kevin Eudaly and Martin Brechbiel.  (Must add I miss Brian's wit and out of the box considerations). I consider my magazine collection a library of scale documentation . Yes John we play with our trains, as  we are so fortunate. O scale has been great to me.

leroof (Pierre Marki)

3 rail Toy trains have been great for just about the same reasons, Fun and comraderie and challenge.

thanks for the cool topic.

Leroof

WILLYGEE, big time modern  WOW on your video! Thanks. 

In the less than 3 years that I’ve been involved in 2-rail I am amazed at what I have acquired in such a relatively short time. There is an incredible selection of rolling stock and motive power available. It’s easy to want for more but I’m extremely pleased with the present and future offerings.

Thanks to Atlas and MTH for giving modelers the option to buy ready-to-run 2-rail trains. Not everybody has a budget to own high-end brass exclusively to satisfy their 2-rail needs. And, you can’t forget about the DCC guys like myself who now have lots of options when it comes to DCC operations. My personal favorites are ESU with their awesome DCC decoders and North Coast Engineering with their fantastic command sets and accessories! 👍🏼

Hopefully, Atlas will at last resume a regular production schedule. I have 6 SD40’s on order not to mention all of the rolling stock I reserved. In a letter from Paul Graf in January he stated that all open purchase orders will be fulfilled this year. I hope that’s true and Atlas can once again start delivering some of the models that haven’t been produced in years like GP9’s, GP35’s, GP60’s, SD35’s, Dash 8-40B’s etc. Another run of Gunderson Twin Stacks would be nice, too!

Yes, it is a good time to be in 2-rail and I’m optimistic that it will continue to get better, especially with Sunset 3rd Rail announcing GP7’s and GP9’s for 2020.